This winter, our friends at the Arts Club Theatre Company are producing a stage adaptation of Mark Sakamoto’s Forgiveness.

About the play:

Forgiveness is the powerful story of the harrowing experiences of Sakamoto’s family during World War II. Ralph, Sakamoto’s maternal grandfather, was a Canadian soldier of European descent who spent years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Mitsue, his paternal grandmother, was one of the thousands of Japanese Canadians interned by the government. In the face of tremendous adversity and transgressions, they chose not to live a life of anger but instead to embrace forgiveness—a gift of love they passed down to their families.

2022 marks the 80th year since Japanese Canadian Internment in BC. In this panel discussion, we ask: what can stories from the stage teach us about the ongoing legacies of this history?

This program will feature a special preview of the play followed by a moderated panel. The panel will feature: Forgiveness playwright Hiro Kanagawa; playwright and museum educator Carolyn Nakagawa; community elder and educator Vivian Rygnestad; and community elder, writer, curator, and activist Grace Eiko Thomson. A Q&A will follow where attendees may ask questions to the panelists and the actors.

This program is produced in collaboration with the Arts Club Theatre Company, Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre and UBC Library and sponsored by UBC Community Engagement.

We acknowledge the generous support of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.

Date: Friday, January 6, 2023
Time: 7:30-9:30pm
Location: Museum of Vancouver, 1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver
Admission: $10 - $20, Sliding Scale (Please note that refunds will only be honored until Thursday, January 5 at 10am)

Schedule:

7:30pm: Program begins

7:40pm: Performance

8:00pm: Panel discussion

8:30pm: Break

8:40pm: Q&A

9:30pm: Program end

If you are having trouble using the embedded form above, please try to reserve your ticket directly on Eventbrite here.

Highlight Video

Performers

Panelist

Hiro Kanagawa

Hiro Kanagawa is an award-winning actor and writer based in Vancouver. His full-length plays The Patron Saint of Stanley Park (Arts Club productions 2010 & 2011) and The Tiger of Malaya have been performed across Canada as have many of his shorter works. He received the 2017 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Drama for his play, Indian Arm. Also a script doctor and consultant, he was story editor on several critically-acclaimed Canadian television series: Da Vinci’s Inquest, Da Vinci’s City Hall, Intelligence and Blackstone. Hiro’s next play, Urashima, co-commissioned by the Banff Centre and the Stratford Festival, is inspired by the astonishing true accounts of 19th Century Japanese castaways in the Pacific Northwest.

Carolyn Nakagawa

Carolyn Nakagawa is a fourth-generation Anglo-Japanese Canadian poet, playwright, and cultural organizer who makes her home in the territory colonized as Vancouver, BC. She is currently developing a musical with composer Peter Abando based on the true story of the grassroots Japanese Canadian newspaper, The New Canadian. Nakagawa’s poems have appeared in publications such as The Malahat Review, CV2, and The New Quarterly, and she has read her work at Powell Street Festival and Heart of the City Festival. Her plays have been presented by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre and Ruby Slippers Theatre. She holds an honours degree in English Literature and Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies from the University of British Columbia.

Grace Eiko Thomson

Grace Eiko Thomson is a curator, historian, and social activist. She was the founding director-curator of the Japanese Canadian National Museum, (now Nikkei National Museum). Born in Steveston’s Japanese Fishermen’s Hospital, she was raised in the Powell Street neighbourhood of Vancouver until her family was forced to leave in 1942. They settled in the self-supporting incarceration site of Minto, and in 1945 moved to Manitoba, eventually settling in Winnipeg, where she graduated high school, then business college. She worked as legal secretary to support her parents’ re-settlement before going on to raise a family. She graduated from University of Manitoba School of Art (BFA Hons.), then a Master in Asian Art History (UBC), and in Social History of Art (University of Leeds, UK).

She went on to work as an artist, instructor, and curator for many projects and places across Canada. She served on the Board of the National Association of Japanese Canadians as President and Past President. She continues to advise on topics related to Japanese Canadian history and culture, and to speak in Canada, the US, and Japan. As well, she takes part in community committees on current issues related Downtown Eastside, where Japanese Canadians once lived.

In 2021, she published her memoir with Caitlin Press: Chiru Sakura – Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression.

Vivian Rygnestad

Vivian Wakabayashi Rygnestad is a retired school principal and lives in Richmond B.C. She is an advisor to the Pacific Canada Heritage Centre - Museum of Man organisation. She is committed to learning, understanding, honoring, preserving and teaching others about Japanese Canadian history. Along with her extended family in B.C. and Toronto, she has been active within the Japanese Canadian community for many years. She is currently working with two book committees on Japanese Canadian history: “Honouring our People” (stories of our elders), and “Pidgin English” (preserving our oral history). She is President of the B.C. Retired Principals’ & Vice-Principals’ Association, and has experience working with school districts, teachers, and principals/vice-principals as a presenter and facilitator in professional development. She hopes that “Landscapes of Injustice” will lead to open dialogue and further deep learning to prevent such injustices in the future. In 2015, Vivian was honoured as one of UBC’s Outstanding Alumni from the Faculty of Education.

Moderator

Laura Fukumoto

Laura Fukumoto is a performance poet, playwright, and costumed designer about town. She came to so-called Vancouver more than a decade ago from the Toronto area and has worn many hats in the theatre and film industries. She writes about her Japanese-Canadian heritage, queer joy, and hopes to more fully explore her love of mycology. Coming up is an apprenticeship as a creative writing mentor, and a small writing residency in the spring. BFA Theatre Production from UBC and The Writer’s Studio, SFU.

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